In the last couple of weeks it has seemed like the Economist was not worth the time it took to read. But this week I was reminded of why I read the magazine. Some of the highlights…..
The article on Japan called Rebalancing act. The article suffers from the usual Economist foible of trying to spin something as positive what is a total disaster. Take this paragraph, for example. . .
JAPANESE households used to be among the world’s biggest savers and, as a result, the country ran a massive trade surplus. But no longer. They now save less of their income than American households, and Japan’s trade balance moved into deficit last year (see top chart). A long-overdue—and painful—economic rebalancing is under way.
Rebalancing is such stupid word for spending down your savings in the face of economic disaster. For years I have had to suffer through listening to fools arguing that Japan’s problem was that its people saved too much. Now that the savings rate in Japan is practically zero (see the charts in the article) things are going just dandy, right?
But if you can get past the fact that the facts presented in the article are completely at odds with the idea that Japan is going through some kind of positive “rebalancing,” the article is a very interesting read.
Another interesting read is the article entitled The bees are back in town . You can read the article as both refuting some of the wilder fears about the collapse of the honey bee population and as a warning on the dangers of extreme mono cultures. Though it is clear that the writer’s intent is only the former and not the latter.
The article entitled About face was also interesting. It made me wonder how creditworthy I looked. It also made me think of Abraham Lincoln’s famous contention that after a certain age you could blame a man for how he looked (meaning their moral character would start to show through, not that people should all be handsome. He had enough self knowledge to know that nobody could accuse him of being handsome).
Those are only the highlights of this week’s Economist. There were other articles that I found interesting as well. But you can scan what is in this week’s edition for yourself if you are so inclined.
My apologies for anyone who struggled through reading this before I whacked off his worse grammatical errors. Please remember that even the brilliant Albert Einstein occasionally forgot where he lived; just because our Ape Man cannot always remember the difference between “passed” and “past” does not necessarily indicate he is in the habit of drooling. We apologize for the technical difficulties, and we hope that you will find his ideas worth reading in spite of his occasional struggles with coherency.
Sincerly,
The Troll